It would be ‘an honor’ to have her other daughters wed Hamas killer, says Zeian Asfura, after her daughter Widad, Deif’s wife, and two grandchildren died in Israeli strike on Gaza home last week

Relatives of 27-year-old Widad Deif, the wife of Hamas's military commander Mohammed Deif, carry her body during her funeral procession at the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on August 20, 2014. (photo credit: AFP Photo/Roberto Schmidt)

The bereaved mother-in-law of Hamas terror chief Muhammad Deif said she would be “honored” were he to marry her two other daughters, even if they were “martyred” as a consequence.

Deif’s wife Widad and his son and daughter were killed last week in an Israeli airstrike aimed at Deif, the Hamas military commander said by Israel to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israelis in a career of terrorism dating back to the early 1990s.

Apparently believing that Deif survived the Israeli strike, Widad’s mother Zeian Asfura, 61, told London’s Sunday Times in an interview published Sunday: “Should Deif request the hand of any of my other daughters, I will happily consent and even if she, too, is martyred I will consent to the third.

“It is an honor to have Deif a husband to any of my daughters and be a father to their children,” Asfura added.

Muhammad Deif

Hamas claims that Deif survived Tuesday’s assassination attempt, but has produced no sign of life.

Asfura said that when she consented to the marriage in 2011, she realized the possible consequence. “When I agreed the marriage, I in effect consented to a fate of martyrdom for my daughter,” she said.

The strike aimed at Deif was followed last Wednesday by an Israeli strike in which three other top Hamas terror chiefs were killed. Hamas has since killed more than 20 alleged “collaborators” with Israel, as it grapples with the knowledge that Israeli intelligence has proved capable of pinpointing some of its leaders’ movements.